Enemy crew numbers on ships in battle - why should we know?

[Dracul]

I am not sure if this has been suggested before or not, but from my point of view, when I board a player, I generally make sure I have more crew than my opponent.   Safer that way as I lower the risk for myself.  In RL, however, no captain knew his opponents crew numbers before boarding a enemy vessel.   True, a captain might have some idea of how many men might be aboard - but, no true and fast number.   So, IMHO, we should have no idea of how many crew there are on a ship before boarding - only once boarded do we find out.  During battle,  give feedback and count crew kills, but still hold his total crew numbers back until boarding has started.   

[StaleMemes]

Perhaps instead of saying how many crew the enemy ship has in total, say how many they have in boarding (on deck and visible)

[Percival Merewether]

I would love to have no fixed numbers but visual damage instead - the problem is that none of the visual dmg seems like very good indicators today, not even sails, despite being the most obvious.

Sails can look "okay'ish" at 50% and look completely torn at 85% depending on the vessel.

Real life examples of visual dmg:

• Blood streaming from scuppers
• Broken yards
• Flying sails
• Guns knocked out of place
• Battered planking
• Destroyed stern galleries

I have often suggested that the structure bar should be replaced with morale, and auto surrender when it reaches 0 thus making it possible to sink a vessel in only two ways:

1. Leaks
2. Scuttling

If a captain scuttles his ship on battle start, PvP-marks will be distributed evenly among the enemy. If scuttling happens after the engagement has started, marks will be distributed according to dmg. It should not be possible to scuttle your ship with less than 33% morale left.

Edited September 11, 2018 by Percival Merewether

[Tiedemann]

I totally agree.

It is the same for cannons loaded/unloaded, sail % and hp damage. Would be very interesting only to be able to see the internal structure HP and nothing else. 

The missing information could be replaced by visual sightings, making the telescope more important in battle. So if we repair hull then the cannon ball hulls would be plugged up/removed. So then we know if a ship has a damaged side or not just by looking at it. But with the current repair system we need to see these thing to be able to kill each other in 90 minutes. So right now it would not make sense, but if the repair system was changed/nerfed and it the damage output buffed somehow this could be very interesting to test out but maybe to hard for us to handle xD 

[Tomasso il Fortunato]

2 hours ago, Capt Aerobane said:

Perhaps instead of saying how many crew the enemy ship has in total, say how many they have in boarding (on deck and visible)

Yeah, just wait for that moment when the crew on deck will be visible . Only man on cannons we can see now , not even the captain :))) .

[Sir Texas Sir]

Cause this is a game and you need to see the stats of the other players to make fights fair and how to respond.  Stop with this stupid hard core stuff cause all they do is drive players away.  This is not a historical simulator, it's a game.

Edited September 11, 2018 by Sir Texas Sir

[Dracul]

3 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Cause this is a game and you need to see the stats of the other players to make fights fair and how to respond.  Stop with this stop hard core stuff cause all they do is drive players away.  This is not a historical simulator, it's a game.

Just out of curiosity, where do you think the lines are drawn between 'historical simulation' and 'game', with regards to NA?  There is masses of historical simulation in this game.   IMHO,  NA is built around historical simulation.  What I proposed would just add more apprehension in battle.  Isn't this supposed to be a hard core 'game'?    

[Aster]

Especially with the determined defender perk you need  to know crew numbers.

[sounthernrebel78]

43 minutes ago, Dracul said:

Just out of curiosity, where do you think the lines are drawn between 'historical simulation' and 'game', with regards to NA?  There is masses of historical simulation in this game.   IMHO,  NA is built around historical simulation.  What I proposed would just add more apprehension in battle.  Isn't this supposed to be a hard core 'game'?    

Your right not knowing a ships crew number would also "attempt" help counter player you just try to board and not really fight. It would simply force player to learn standard crew sizes for ships which many already do just like they know what many of the ships are buy looking at them. 

[sounthernrebel78]

12 minutes ago, Aster said:

Especially with the determined defender perk you need  to know crew numbers.

Actually WE wouldn't as long as the game new it would know the numbers. The game doesn't allow you to board if you are over a certain speed or over a certain distance. It would simply do the same determined defender. 

 

This would be a nice feature but something that would come about near release if added at all. 

[Farrago]

On 9/11/2018 at 4:47 PM, Dracul said:

Just out of curiosity, where do you think the lines are drawn between 'historical simulation' and 'game', with regards to NA?  There is masses of historical simulation in this game.   IMHO,  NA is built around historical simulation.  What I proposed would just add more apprehension in battle.  Isn't this supposed to be a hard core 'game'?    

The trouble is we can remove the magic info of crew numbers and damage percentages but we can’t — for technical reasons — provide the more realistic alternative: what a Captain would see to determine ship and crew damage levels. So, guessing based on unrealistic visual info would just be not fun.

Maybe someday our computers and virtual reality programming will be up to the task, but not now.

[Capn Rocko]

If cannon stats were taken away, I would like to see proper animation added to loaded/unloaded cannons. In real life cannons were rolled forward only after being swabbed, charged, and loaded. Thus, if the cannon is not protruding from the side of the ship = not loaded. 

Edited September 12, 2018 by Capn Rocko

[Capn Rocko]

1 hour ago, rediii said:

this was ingame already and causes too many fps problems

Since Unity 5 update?

[speijk]

maybe a compromise.  say a certain number (hard number add or minus a random percent between 0 and 10% )

so u can think that u up against 290 crew it might be less or more

 

[Cetric de Cornusiac]

Normally I am all for hardcore and realism, but without indicators of damage and crew numbers I suppose new players will be even more clueless, have their bad surprises - and you know what that means, playerbase-wise...

[HamBlower]

I think totaly different. We play a game!

Count of Crew Members is one of some numbers/infomations an enemy in real life wasn't able to see. The number of leaks, the state of armour and structure, destroyed cannons and so on...

Dracul's idea looks on one single Information, the Crew number, tomorrow  we will see a new forum topic on structure indication. 

This "guys I have an idea" is ok if you make suggestions for a bigger context, but not in microproblems that aren't even problems.

This topic is useless!

 

Edited September 13, 2018 by HamBlower

[Rook]

This is a great idea. However, I think it might need to be part of a larger rework. As others have said, whether I like it or not, this game is currently a balance between realism and arcade gameplay. A fairly decent balance, but leaning more toward arcade than realism in some very key areas, for whats been proposed in this thread. Especially the lack of accurate visual indicators of damage.

That's not to say we couldn't do with a rework of the ships stats display in battle. While there isn't necessarily a problem with the current setup, it is a silent driver behind gameplay. Watch a few port battles and you'll hear callouts to focus fire on a specific ship because it's weak. Get in a few close runs with a hunter squadron, and you'll see them play the damage indicators. It makes me wonder how different combat would be if you couldn't read out the exact disposition of the enemy's ship. Would it be more, or less, interesting?

Edited September 17, 2018 by Rook